OUTRAGE

I had a cable public access show way before Wayne’s World. Local Trash brought the citizens of Roseville, California, the very best of fifteen-year-olds smashing out three-chord punk rock while yelling in delightful adolescent voices about bored cops, asshole teachers, and posers.

I was a mess of depression and anger at moving from Southern California, where I’d known one house as home all my fourteen years, to Roseville, a suburb of Sacramento, where I knew no one and got made fun of for my weird clothes. My mom, saint that she is, saw an ad, “Public access producers needed. Free training!” and encouraged me to call. Once again, Mom saved my life.

I learned to operate a camera, work a switcher, and I was probably one of the last people to learn to edit video using two tape decks and a controller. I spent many happy hours entering edit in and out points at RSVL8, our local cable access station, set up by the cable company as part of their deal with the city to bring cable TV to our market.

And unlike other geeky hobbies I’d undertaken, this one actually made me friends, though perhaps not the friends my dear sweet mom would have chosen for me. Soon I knew most every teenage metal or punk musician in town.

I got a call inviting me to come meet a band called American Freedom. A friend was persuaded to drive me to a house in a nearby suburb where they were rehearsing. The first thing I noticed after walking into the backyard was skinheads. I’d never actually met a skinhead. I’d always thought they looked cool, in fact their uniform reminded me of the cholos I’d grown up with, but the kind of over-the-top masculinity they represented was something I’d never been a fan of. It turned out that two of the skinheads were the singer and the guitarist in the band. I just assumed they were “the good kind,” and as I started up the camera this was one of the first things they confirmed. “We’re SHARPS, Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice,” the guitarist, Sam, announced. Ryan, a friend of the band, chimed in, “Yeah, man, fuck Nazis. Hitler’s dead.”

That was all I needed to hear. They started playing heavily Minor Threat–influenced punk rock and I loved it and recorded it. Once again, the big shoulder-killing camera I signed out from RSVL8 had made me some new friends.

They invited me to see them play at a backyard party that weekend. I stood on the edge of a mosh pit after running out of videotape, and a caveman-looking punk with a Mohawk stopped in front of me. “I’m Rot,” he said, holding up his fist where he had tattooed the letters R O T between his knuckles.

“I’m Keith,” I answered, feeling bad that I didn’t have it written on me anywhere. Rot put his arm around me and pulled me into the pit. It was one of the nicest ways anybody has ever welcomed me into a new group.

It was decided that I would become the band’s manager, and thankfully they also decided to change their awful name. American Freedom became Outrage. I didn’t have a very clear idea of what a manager was meant to do. I attended rehearsals, made t-shirts by hand using special crayons that could be ironed into permanence. I shot music videos for them, one of which had the distinction of generating the most complaint calls and letters RSVL8 Public Access had ever received. Chris, who ran the studio, thanked me for confirming that people were actually watching. The offending video featured footage of people doing drugs, made extra realistic because Jon the bass player was diabetic and we were able to make use of his syringes. Our defense was that the message of the song “Sick Man” was an antidrug one.

During this time, I was working at Kentucky Fried Chicken, shooting and editing my cable access show, and sleeping through most of my classes at school.

My history teacher, Mr. Shields, pulled me aside after class. “Keith, I don’t know what’s going on in your personal life, but you know this material, you’ve obviously done the reading. I’d rather you didn’t sleep in my class, but I understand we all gotta sleep sometime. If you can get an A on every Friday test and on your final, and you do all your homework, you can sleep through class and still get a C.”

“And without the homework?” I asked, being realistic.

“With all As on the weekly tests and on the final, you can get a D without homework.”

I thanked him and went for the D.

I was with Jon and Sam, the bass player and the guitarist, in the tiny editing suite at RSVL8, which was literally a closet. Crammed together in tight quarters, I couldn’t help but notice that Sam was squirming in his chair and pulling at his pants.

“Hey man, you okay?” I asked. “You got crabs?”

“No, I don’t have fucking crabs,” he snapped. “I shaved my balls and they itch.”

Jon and I started to giggle. “You shaved your balls?” I squeaked.

“I’m a fucking skinhead!” Sam answered, as if it were obvious.

Jon and I picked up that he was pretty angry and we tried to go back to editing. Sam was a solid, muscular dude and I didn’t think I could take him in a fight. I had no desire to find out. We did our best to stifle our giggles.

A few minutes later my curiosity got the better of me. “Skinheads shave their balls?” Jon lost his battle against the giggles and let out a loud, explosive laugh.

“YES!”

“So all skinheads do this?”

“YES! Real skinheads shave their balls.”

At that we laughed openly. Picturing these big, tough dudes with smooth, clean balls was just too much. Sam punched us both hard in the arm. We tried to stop. We tried to get back to work. But the giggle kept creeping up whenever Sam would shift or scratch at himself. Finally he’d had enough. “Fuck you guys,” he said, and he stormed out of the editing closet.

None of us mentioned this again. I helped Outrage record a demo. It was an exciting day. We listened to the tape in my parents’ van immediately after and the band members’ parents held a meeting to discuss how to support their kids, which was kind of amazing.

But … the band broke up, and, shortly after, Sam started a new band with his skinhead friend Ryan, the one who had reminded us on camera that Hitler was dead the day I’d first been introduced to this crowd. I was surprised and saddened to find out they were a white-power band. I went to see them perform at a garage party to see for myself if it was true. It was.

They had flipped their ideology 180 degrees. They went from antiracist to racist and didn’t even have to change their uniforms other than swapping out their shoelaces for white ones.

I’d had Sam over to my house when my parents were entertaining black and Mexican friends, my dad having to whisper the explanation that there were apparently good skinheads, too. I knew this would be the end of our friendship. I certainly would never welcome him into my home again.

I got good and drunk at the show and climbed into the camper-shelled bed of a pickup truck with Jon, who had played bass for Outrage, and several other punks. We were quiet as the truck pulled away from our friend’s white-power coming-out party. Our buddy had gone over to the dark side. I figured I’d never see Sam again, and this turned out to be true.

Then, lying drunk in the back of a pickup truck, I started to defend racism. This was a game I often played in my own head, picking a position I found abhorrent and then trying to argue it to sharpen my debate skills and my own position. I had to be pretty drunk to play this little game out loud.

Jon, who I remember as intelligent, kind, and gentle, said firmly, “Keith, shut up.”

I did and we rode the rest of the way in silence.

“Punching someone should make you uncomfortable. It’s an important moral decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Punching a Nazi should make you uncomfortable too, because you should hit them hard enough that your hand hurts afterwards.”

—Dan Arel, Author, Award-Winning Journalist